This is a GNU implementation of an old UNIX tool. It’s older than Linux, let alone package managers. There’s also BSD and other implementations available (the B

This is a GNU implementation of an old UNIX tool. It’s older than Linux, let alone package managers. There’s also BSD and other implementations available (the BSD version comes pre-installed on macOS). This isn’t some new tool that is uncommon in UNIX systems, it’s something that a lot of OSs ship with their base install and have done for several decades. The reason why that matters is because documentation was very different back then. People relied on ‘man’ pages and physical binders with printed instructions. READMEs did exist but they were plain text (not even markdown) and that was generally just there to explain how to compile the source (the compilation would create man pages)